The L.A. Times has canned its weekday "Kids' Reading Room" feature, which ran in the Calendar section next to the comics. Part of the paper's "Reading by 9" initiative, the feature -- which usually included a multi-part story, some jokes and riddles and a few other segments -- will now only run on Sundays (in the Comics I section, above). The Sunday feature has been expanded to two pages as a result.
I'm guessing the reasons may be simple: With a smaller paper and a tighter news hole, the "Kids' Reading Room" was probably expendable. Who knows whether features like that actually spur newspaper readership among kids anyway. (I love newspapers, and none of the ones I read growing up ever targeted kids with features like that. And honestly, even at age 9 I wouldn't have cared for it. But then again, I was -- am? -- a geek.)
In explaining the change, however, an editor's note took a different tact: Arguing that the move made sense because parents and kids have more time to read the paper together on Sunday, and that teachers can plan around the Sunday pages better than the weekday ones.
The paper also promises an expanded kids website, although if you look at it, the kids page looks like any other news page on the Times' site. In other words, it's not exactly visually appealing for an 8-year-old.
Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, most of the Sunday color comics have been preserved despite the change (although I think we would have all cheered if "Mallard Fillmore" had somehow been dropped in the shuffle -- as well as the confusingly pointless "Pink Panther" comic).
No comments:
Post a Comment